


the busy and the tired

by AdamantiumDragonfly



Series: Lady Blood [2]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: AU, Amira is just there, Brother-Sister Relationships, Ezriel is an absent father with no children, F/M, Family Dynamics, Historical Accuracy, Historical References, Light Angst, Loyalty Tested, Miriam is overworked get this girl a nap, Sadie is a bean, Sibling Bonding, World War I, World War One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26569624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdamantiumDragonfly/pseuds/AdamantiumDragonfly
Summary: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Series: Lady Blood [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932427
Kudos: 2





	the busy and the tired

London hadn't been home for more than four years. Miriam still had memories of Leipzig, the gardens, the house she had grown up in. She and Ezriel had taken their first steps there, she had taken Sadie by the hand and walked the streets. Britain was where they lived but she still thought of Germany as home.

Britain had taken things from her. No native tongue, only English. No father, only an empty chair, and the bills that were stacked on the kitchen table. No mother, only a shell of a woman who left Miriam with two younger sisters and a house to care for. She couldn't be Miriam as she wanted to be, instead, she had to put on the front. The front of Miriam Goldschmidt who was undeniably German but trying her best to be British. Miriam Goldschmidt who was trying her very best to keep her family together.

"Mim!" Sadie's voice always broke the silence of their home, the kind of quiet that hung heavier than the lingering smell of death. Left in this home alone, with only her mother's empty face, Miriam was always happy to see her sister's bright one. They were supposed to be with Mrs. Vette down the road while she tried to get their mother to eat something.

August was always a hard month, the three year anniversary of David Goldschmidt's death just around the corner. Sarah didn't handle the reminder well and Miriam knew she would have to struggle through another four weeks of silence and refusing food before they turned the page. Once September arrived they would maybe get a smile out of her and some movement. She would eat again, at least.

"In here!" Miriam called, tucking her hair behind her ear and tossing the mail into a basket in the center of the table. She would have to sit down with Ezriel tonight and they would have to find a solution. Debts were due and with only her older brother's wage as an orderly, Miriam would have to work. But then what would happen to Sadie and Amira? Sadie was fifteen years old but Amira was eleven. They couldn't take care of their mother on their own.

Not for the first time, Miriam allowed herself a fleeting wish. That Papa was still alive. That Mama hadn't broken in half and that Miriam hadn't been left to pick up the pieces.

Sadie's boots hammered against the wooden floors, shaking the walls and rattling the few knick-knacks that they had taken from home on their shelf until she slid to a stop in the kitchen. There was really no reason to yell. Their terrace house was small and everything could be heard, the walls thin enough that their neighbors were sure to hear her little sister's enthusiasm.

"Shhh," Miriam pressed a finger to her lips and darted her eyes to the back garden to glance over the wall. No head bobbed above the fence to shout at them to be quiet and she sighed with relief. She whirled around to face her sisters, both breathless and flushed from their excitement and the heat of the summer day. Only three days into August and Miriam was already dying. 

"What were you thinking of coming in here and shouting like that?" She scolded. In English. Always English. "Go upstairs and check on Mama."

Sarah was in the back bedroom, the coolest room of the house with the windows open for a breeze. Amira nodded and slipped out of the room, softly. Miriam watched her go, approving the girl's pace before turning back to the real problem.

Sympathy twinged in her stomach as she looked down at her younger sister. Sadie had grown up with Mama as she was, her memories of life in Leipzig fuzzy. Four years in Britain had turned her sister into a Brit, Miriam realized with a pang. The way she styled her hair the way she wore Miriam's old dress fitted as best she could by lamplight. Sadie didn't want to be German.

"Shame on you," Miriam said, turning to the pile of dishes that she had ignored. Shame on herself for not doing the work. If Miriam didn't do it, no one else would.

"I'm sorry, Mim," Sadie said, following her sister to the sink and they rolled up their sleeves together. Sadie washed, Miriam dried and Amira reappeared, promising that their mother was still asleep, lost to the world as she always was.

"Sadie, hast du Miriam gesagt, was Frau Vette gesagt hat?"

"English!" Amira's older sisters said in unison. Their eyes met and a breathless laugh escaped their mouths but Miriam's smile slid from her lips as she remembered the tensions at home. Germany wasn't in Britain's good graces which meant that they weren't in their new home's good graces. Danger. One more thing that Miriam couldn't control.

"No," Miriam said, not making Amira repeat her words in English as Sadie would have. "What did Mrs. Vette say?"

Their neighbor, Kitty Vette, was from Germany too but had been in residence in London since 1900. She had taken the Goldschmidt's under her wing and helped them find a synagogue here in London, on Dukes Place. Mrs. Vette had opened her home more times that Miriam cared to count and she trusted her with her sisters' lives.

"There was an ulti-" Amira paused. "An ultimatum with Germany. They had to leave Belgium by midnight tonight."

They were in Belgium, her countrymen, her old neighbors, and friends. And her new friends, her new countrymen, her new British neighbors were on holiday today. Miriam's hands were wrinkled in the dishwater and she nodded. It would have come to this, she thought. It always would have come to this. Torn between countries, she now had to figure out which one she support in a war, should it come to that.

She slipped upstairs, after reassuring Amira and Sadie that everything would be alright. Miriam was always the one to soothe. She had been since her mother had withdrawn into the shadow of Sarah Goldschmidt three years before. Miriam had been the one to help Sadie with her corset and would do the same for Amira. Miriam had packed every lunch for Ezriel, squirreled away money, and darned the socks. She had mended countless articles of clothing and she had done her best to mend the family.

Her mother's room was quiet, blessedly. The Yahzeit candle sat on the chest of drawers waiting to be lit on the sixteenth in remembrance. She was asleep, her graying brown curls lying on the white pillowcase. She looked so peaceful, almost childlike. For three years Miriam had filled in her mother's shoes. She could have resented her. She could have been angry. But she was mostly hurt.

No dreams of leaving home, no matter how far-fetched and running through the gardens in Leipzig. No fulfilling any destiny that might have waited for Miriam to chase it. Just this house, haunted by memories and three siblings who needed to be looked after.

Miriam had wanted to work but even that was impossible. Sarah, on her good days, needed constant attention and didn't like it when she was left with a neighbor, even Mrs. Vette. Miriam was chained to this damned house.

Ezriel could go where he wanted. Ezriel had a job. He had worked in offices all over London before finding the perfect placement for his high hopes of political prowess: the Imperial General staff office. He had spent hours talking about all he would do once he had finished college and once he had made a name for himself. But it was a German name and there was nothing anyone could do to hide that.

Miriam wasn't expecting her brother's return at midnight. He had been on a bank holiday, all of London shut down. No one was at an office and no one should have been working at all, let alone late into the night. But Ezriel's footsteps started down the hallway at a quarter past one in the morning and slipped into Miriam's room.

The room was shared with Amira and Sadie. The room that was hotter than hell in the August heat.

"Miri," he said, calling her by the childhood nickname. He was the only one who still called her that. Sadie had turned to "Mim" as it was "more refined". It had nothing to do with refinement, Miriam knew. It sounded more British. "I need to talk to you."

Miriam extracted herself from the sweaty pile of limbs and hair that was her shared bed with Sadie and glanced down at Amira's pallet on the floor. They were both still asleep. Like a whisper of a ghost in her nightdress, she slipped through the door and followed Ezriel out onto the landing.

"Where were you?" Miriam hissed, the open windows on the stairs sending a breeze against her bare feet and sending a shiver down her spine. The look on her brother's face didn't help. Fear, something Ezriel didn't show, and resolve. The same resolve in his face when he had to put his dreams of university on hold for the office work after Papa's death. The same resolve that crossed the threshold of their home to face his shell of a mother and his baby sisters who had to say goodbye to childhood too soon.

"I was called in."

"Called in?" She didn't care if they shouldn't speak in German, she wanted to ask her brother if it was true that Germany was in Belgium. If it was true the ultimatum. If they would have to choose where their loyalties lay. "What do you mean called in?"

"Britain is at war with Germany." all of her fear, her confusion, and even the weight she had carried for the past three years fell like scales from her shoulders. She shed some part of herself, the German part, she'd like to think, leaving a gray little ghost who stood on the landing. She tried to will life back into her limbs.

"Why did they want you?" Miriam asked. "Did they think you were going to betray them?"

If Ezriel lost his job they would sink into debt and destitution more than they already were. No one would hire them, Miriam or Ezriel, and they would starve.

"They knew I was German," Ezriel said. "They want me to change divisions and they want me to work for them."

"Work for them?"

"They think having a German on staff would give them an insight "

"What?" An insight? Did they want an insight into their family, on their friends? They wanted Ezriel to betray his homeland? "You can't do that."

"I have to." Ezriel shook his head, the darkness muffling the movement and any life that had managed to warm Miriam's body fell away again at his next words. "And so do you."

"What?"

"They asked after you. They knew I had a sister."

Miriam couldn't leave Amira and Sadie. She couldn't leave Mama. She couldn't leave this house on this street that she had firmly fixed herself to with stubborn rigidity. Yes, Leipzig was her home but Britain was where her family was. Miriam couldn't let them suffer because of who they were, where they had come from, and now, what they had lost. They were losing Ezriel now too.

"Did you tell them that I would?" Miriam asked. She was only sixteen. Would they really want her?

"I told them I would ask," Ezriel said. "But you don't tell these men 'no'."

No, she supposed they couldn't.

"There's a wage?" She asked. What would they have her do, really? Ferry coffee and files? This new department was sure to be office work.

"Yes," Ezriel said. "And with the two of us working..."

"A better life for the girls," Miriam finished, glancing back at the closed door where Sadie and Amira were asleep. Miriam didn't have a future, not one of any consequences but times were changing and maybe they could hope to afford some semblance of education for Sadie or even Amira. Miriam didn't have a future but she wanted her sisters to be happy, to not have to wring laundry or die rattling with a cough from pneumonia that never fully healed. 

Not for her girls.

If she did work in an office, there was sure to be chances of advancement, even if it was just bookkeeping. Miriam could make her own future, through hard work, and lay the path for her sisters behind her.

For her sisters, she would turn against her country and what had been her home. For herself, she would make a name, something that everyone else in this country had. 

One day, Miriam Goldschmidt wouldn't mean a tired girl who was scared and strained with nothing under control. Maybe one day, Miriam Goldschmidt would mean power and control. There was only one way she could do that.

"Alright," Miriam said. She allowed herself to speak German, one last time as a native-born. Speaking it with familiarity and loyalty. "Ich werde es tun."


End file.
